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Stop fermentation when mixing batches?

I'll be mixing a gallon of traditional into a 3-gallon muscadine pyment pretty soon here, and I'm wondering how I would go about making sure that the fermentation is stopped after I backsweeten and before I bottle.

I'm assuming that I would mix the two together into my bottling bucket, backsweeten with honey to taste, and then add campden tablets/potassium metabisulphide. My question is, how long should I leave it in the bottling bucket to let the sulphates do their thing? I don't want to leave it long enough to oxidize, as it will have a lot of surface area exposed in the bottling bucket...

That's how I'd do it, although if I could, I'd give it a week or two to make sure the SG doesn't drop. Although I understand if you don't have the right sized container, why you'd want to bottle it ASAP, to prevent unnecessary exposure to oxygen... although I suppose you could separate them back out into the 3-gal and 1-gal carboys they're currently in during that time.

Last edited by Chevette Girl; 05-04-2012 at 02:17 AM.

"The main ingredient needed is 'time' followed closely by 'patience'." - The Bishop 2013
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"Sure it can be done. I've never heard of it, but I do things I've never heard if all the time. That is the beauty of being a brewer!" - Loveofrose, 2014
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Yeah ideally you give it time under an airlock to make sure it's not going to continue to ferment between backsweetening and bottling. If the blending is what is giving you volume constraints, you could always stabilize and backsweeten the batches separately, then blend on bottling day. Course sweetening might go differently after blending than before...

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